Teaching Academic Writing Features through Literature Reviews (LRs)

This research is written with the belief that carefully reading and examining the LR sections in research papers published in academic peer-reviewed international journals warrants learning from others’ practices, regardless of any shortcomings that might be there. Hence, it presents the researcher’s practical teaching guidelines on how to use already published LR sections in helping tertiary level students learn about and acquire the academic writing conventions of LRs. It begins with a general discussion of the features of academic writing, how all these are all embedded in the LR sections, and then introduces the steps for sensitizing students to these features and their pragmatic uses. Adopting such strategies will, hopefully, bring about good understanding of the LR function, contents, structure, linguistic features, and will ultimately enable students produce informative LR sections for their research projects. This study utilized qualitative and quantitative tools to gauge the impact of the teaching method used. Results show improvements in students’ post teaching written productions. The paper concludes with a discussion of how such an exercise impacted students’ understanding of the LR writing process

Pharmacy Students’ Attitudes Towards Learning Communication Skills: The Case Of The United Arab Emirates

Effective communication amongst pharmacists, especially clinical pharmacists, physicians, nurses, patients, patients’ families and relatives and health care personnel is essential. Poor communication does not only lead to frustration and lack of respect among professions but also may compromise patient care if important information is misunderstood, ineffectively conveyed, or left out. This research explores clinical pharmacy students’ and clinical pharmacy graduates’ attitudes towards the relevance and importance of learning communication skills in their pharmacy careers in the United Arab Emirates. For the purposes of this study, Rees, Sheard, and Davies’ (2002) Communication Skills Attitudes Scale (CSAS) is used to measure pharmacy students’ and pharmacy graduates’ attitudes towards communication skills learning. Although this measure was originally designed to measure medical students’ attitudes towards communication skills learning in a European country, the results obtained from our study are not dissimilar to those reported by Rees et al. (2002) in their study. The paper concludes with some practical suggestions for pharmacy experts in charge of pharmacy communication courses.

Voices From The United Arab Emirates: Engineering Graduates’ Labour Market Requisite Competencies

This study reports on engineering graduates’ labour market requisite communication competences and skills in the work environment in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Its main purpose was to investigate whether internationally required engineering graduates’ communication competences were the same in third world countries or different. It used a survey to collect responses from major engineering companies operating in the seven emirates federation forming the UAE. The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with some of the participants to seek clarifications on some of the survey responses. Results indicted similar market demands to those reported in international research with differences in preferences and ranking of competences. The conclusions reported are based on the responses given in the surveys. Future research may follow up some engineering graduates and find out how they perform in labor market environments. The findings show that although engineering labor market demands are in line with global market demands, they; nevertheless, indicate differences in the ranking and importance of the required competences and skills. This has significant implications for engineering course designers.

Footnotes in academic written discourse : a formal and functional analysis.

This thesis presents a formal and functional analysis of footnotes In academic journal articles. In Chapter One a brief account of the recent history of Genre Analysis Studies leading to a definition of footnotes Is given. Also given is an account of the differences and similarities between footnotes and some other germane conventional structures (viz, parentheticals and asides) that may carry out similar functions to those that footnotes realize. Reasons why writers use footnotes are suggested and discussed. The work Is based on a corpus of 10 linguistics journal articles comprising 113 footnotes. In the search for a framework in Chapter Two, the relevant literature on text and discourse analysis studies is carefully examined and applied to a sample of the data used for the present work. A classification of the functions to which the article writers have put their footnotes Is offered In Chapter Three. The Chapter ends with a discussio. of the. cxttexta wttte.cs lzase. their footnoting decisions on. The cohesion and coherence relations between footnotes, the 'matrix text exit sentence' (i.e. the sentence tagged by the footnote) and the 'matrix text re-entry sentence' (i.e. the sentence following the one tagged by the footnote) had been Investigated In the context of cohesion and coherence theories and Winter's "Clause Relations". An experiment was conducted to test the coherence and cohesion relations between 'matrix text exit sentences' and footnotes. The issue of whether footnotes present new or old information Is then taken up and the literature on the THENE-RHEME dichotomy is reviewed with a view to shedding further light on footnotes. Chapter Five Is concerned with the question of whether footnotes help or hinder the reader and the reading process and the results are statistically analyzed. Readers' attitudes towards footnotes are surveyed through the use of a questionnaire. Also addressed are the Issues of: the utility of footnotes to readers and the purposes for which readers consult footnotes. In Chapter Six some linguistic features recurring In footnotes (e.g. formulaic expressions, the frequent use of proper names, hedges, etc.) are studied. The results of the study suggest that the employment of footnotes Is a compensatory strategy on the part of writers to overcome the problem of being over/under informative especially when an article is targeted at a multiple audience. This thesis, In addition to the fact that It provides a coverage of a neglected but intrinsically InterestIng and important genre (FOOTNOTES), makes certain theoretical and pedagogical suggestions and identifies further issues for future research which are presented on in Chapter Seven

Teambuilding, Innovation And The Engineering Communication Interface

Recent engineering industry-based research has identified a number of skill deficiencies in graduating engineers. Emphasis on communication and teamwork informed by attributes of self management, problem solving and mutual accountability have been recognized as important needs by The Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET of the United States and are now required in undergraduate course material. The Engineering College at the American University of Sharjah has recognised this reality with the development of a course in language enhancement and professional communication centred on engineering multidisciplinary projects (EMDPs). This paper will outline four innovative practices that together inform this course; team-building, teamwork management, collaborative problem solving, resource management. Brief illustrative descriptions of: team-building through the use of the Belbin Team Role Inventory; management of teamwork development via planning and documentation; personnel and collaborative problem solving and interactive information sources hosted via a LibGuide will elaborate these innovative practices.

UNDERSTANDING OUR AUDIENCE: MESSAGES FROM CONCEPT TO COMPLETION

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a business hub for a great number of multinational and international companies that conduct daily communication activities in English, which has made efficient and audience sensitive written communication an essential requirement in today’s workplace. With computer-mediated communication (CMC) taking over face-to-face communication, this has created an essential need for students to learn efficient and appropriate communication styles pertinent to communication via emails. This study presents a pragmatic approach for teaching the how of writing appropriate and effective professional email messages. Comparisons of pre-and post-teaching email messages point to significant improvements in the quality of post teaching email messages

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TRANSFER OF ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS ACROSS TIME

This study investigates university students' perceptions towards an English for advanced academic writing purposes (AAW) course taught in a private university in the United Arab Emirates. It probes into the relevance of the skills taught to the students' academic disciplines. Data was gathered through a short survey administered to students who successfully completed the course. The transferability of skills was measured in light of some of the learning objectives of the AAW stated in its syllabus. Findings indicated positive students' attitudes towards the AAW course. They also revealed that some learning outcomes did transfer to students' writing tasks in their major courses. However, transfer of these skills was more noticeable in some university disciplines (e.g. English) more than others (e.g. Business Administration). Detailed explanations of reasons and contexts for skill transfer are presented. This research concludes with some pedagogical recommendations and suggestions for course improvement and further research

FORGING BONDS BETWEEN ACADEMIC WRITING RESEARCH RESULTS AND TEACHING MATERIALS

The last four decades have witnessed the birth of numerous studies dealing with the research paper (RP), its rhetorical structure and contents, linguistic features, reporting verbs, review procedures, evaluative language, peer editing, transfer of academic writing skills, and many other features. In spite of the countless researches detailing academic writing features, not a small amount of textbooks on academic writing seem to ignore the results yielded by research conducted on this vital and crucial skill. A great number of academic writing textbooks seem to be unaware of the findings of research on academic writing practices. Thus, it is the purpose of this paper to briefly survey a number of academic writing textbooks claiming to be designed for teaching and developing university students’ academic writing skills and introduce the present author’s attempt in utilizing Swales’ IMRD and CARS patterns in teaching the overall rhetorical structure of academic research papers to tertiary students. The current author strongly believes that academic writing is an apprenticeship process. That is, the students should be shown samples of what they are expected to produce before they actually do it. Therefore, students were, individually, requested to find a journal RP, of 15 pages maximum, in the area they would choose for their research from any peer reviewed journal that uses APA style, print it, highlight only all the section headings, copy them on a separate sheet of paper and bring to the following class. In the second class session, students were divided into teams of 4, and were asked to share and discuss the research design patterns they identified. Then, they selected a representative team member to write the sections and subsections headings they found common in the research design on the whiteboard for all students to see. After this, a whole class discussion of the similarities and differences began. Then, Swales’ models were introduced for comparison with what they found. Using Swales’ models made it easy for students to think in an organized way and assign the information that they had gathered to their relevant sections/move(s).The students’ feedback was encouraging and the research papers they produced corroborated their positive response

Footnotes in academic written discourse : a formal and functional analysis.

This thesis presents a formal and functional analysis of footnotes In academic journal articles. In Chapter One a brief account of the recent history of Genre Analysis Studies leading to a definition of footnotes Is given. Also given is an account of the differences and similarities between footnotes and some other germane conventional structures (viz, parentheticals and asides) that may carry out similar functions to those that footnotes realize. Reasons why writers use footnotes are suggested and discussed. The work Is based on a corpus of 10 linguistics journal articles comprising 113 footnotes. In the search for a framework in Chapter Two, the relevant literature on text and discourse analysis studies is carefully examined and applied to a sample of the data used for the present work. A classification of the functions to which the article writers have put their footnotes Is offered In Chapter Three. The Chapter ends with a discussio. of the. cxttexta wttte.cs lzase. their footnoting decisions on. The cohesion and coherence relations between footnotes, the 'matrix text exit sentence' (i.e. the sentence tagged by the footnote) and the 'matrix text re-entry sentence' (i.e. the sentence following the one tagged by the footnote) had been Investigated In the context of cohesion and coherence theories and Winter's "Clause Relations". An experiment was conducted to test the coherence and cohesion relations between 'matrix text exit sentences' and footnotes. The issue of whether footnotes present new or old information Is then taken up and the literature on the THENE-RHEME dichotomy is reviewed with a view to shedding further light on footnotes. Chapter Five Is concerned with the question of whether footnotes help or hinder the reader and the reading process and the results are statistically analyzed. Readers' attitudes towards footnotes are surveyed through the use of a questionnaire. Also addressed are the Issues of: the utility of footnotes to readers and the purposes for which readers consult footnotes. In Chapter Six some linguistic features recurring In footnotes (e.g. formulaic expressions, the frequent use of proper names, hedges, etc.) are studied. The results of the study suggest that the employment of footnotes Is a compensatory strategy on the part of writers to overcome the problem of being over/under informative especially when an article is targeted at a multiple audience. This thesis, In addition to the fact that It provides a coverage of a neglected but intrinsically InterestIng and important genre (FOOTNOTES), makes certain theoretical and pedagogical suggestions and identifies further issues for future research which are presented on in Chapter Seven